Friday, January 14, 2011

crepe ginger (Cheilocostus speciosus)

This is another kind of wild ginger, crepe ginger (Cheilocostus speciosus).

Costus speciosus or crepe ginger is possibly the best known cultivated species of the genus Costus. This plant is native to southeast Asia, especially on the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. Costus differs from the common ginger by having only one row of spirally arranged leaves.

The species reproduces vegetatively by rhizome and birds disperse seeds when they feed on the fruits.

While it is native to many Pacific Islands, it is an introduced invasive species on others, including the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Hawaii. It is cultivated in India for its medicinal uses and elsewhere as an ornamental.

Oh I didn't know the ginger flower have another flower over it! Ours get picked up by kids before it can bloom properly since it is planted outside our fence! And the dogs trample on the leaves so it does not survive inside the property!

I've never seen the like. Do the white flowers come out of those red decorative things? What are they, pods of some sort? Is the ginger from the root of this edible? I didn't know there were different kinds of ginger.